Making a Run for It

Rumble— A blinding white light capable of swallowing everything erupted in the darkness, tearing down both directions of the cavern corridor with terrifying speed. Along the expanding edge of that sun-bright white radiance, a scarlet figure flashed and flickered desperately down the passage. Chi Feng was so overwhelmingly powerful after unleashing his barbarian runes that Xu Yuan had not dared give him a single instant to react. Even a split second might have allowed that monster to leap clear of the Source Crystal's blast zone. Only after triggering the detonation, however, did Xu Yuan realize he had severely underestimated the explosive power of the Source Crystal bomb. When Li Qingyan had detonated one earlier at a fixed point, the distance and his own cultivation level had kept him from feeling its full fury; he had only felt the cavern shake violently before the Source Qi expanded outward from the planted crystals and vanished. This time, having set it off right beside himself, Xu Yuan truly experienced what it felt like when the body ran ahead while the soul trailed behind in pursuit. Once the Source Crystal bomb completely released its power, a monstrous suction formed along the outer edge of its expanding aura, dragging everything back toward the chaotic vortex of raw energy. The spatial tremors caused by the surging power rendered his life-saving skill, Void-Stepping Slash, dangerously erratic. Death. The sheer volume of concentrated energy made even his aberrant ghost body sense the cold breath of mortality. If swept inside, he would die. At the very least, the human part of him would die. Fortunately, the expansion lasted for only a few breaths. It was as if someone had pressed pause on reality. Upon reaching a critical threshold, the immense sphere of light abruptly froze. The next instant, every scrap of luminescence was sucked back into the center of the blast and vanished! Time resumed. Boom! A tempest tore upward from the epicenter, whipping shattered rock and dust into violent streams that surged toward the far ends of the tunnel. "..." Everything settled into silence. His Cloud-Treading Boots touched down lightly, the residual gale whipping his blood-red robes with sharp snaps. Standing at the crater's rim, Xu Yuan let out a long breath. It seemed his talk-no-jutsu still had a long way to go; he was far from being like that certain shonen protagonist from his previous life, able to sway a villain who had been blackened for half a lifetime into an ally with just a few sentences. Still, there had been no other way. For Barbarian King Chi Feng to have clawed his way to his current position, his resolve had to be unimaginably ironclad. How could mere words sway him? Xu Yuan was hardly surprised by his refusal. Every attempt to talk someone down was a gamble where one staked a little to gain a lot. And nine out of ten gambles ended in defeat. He had won in the past either because he was duping an innocent, sheltered ice block or because his old man had supplied him with the chips to run the table. Facing a titan like the Barbarian King without sufficient leverage, success would have been a miracle, while failure was merely par for the course. Still, this experience served as good practice for carrying bombs into the Blood Nest later. Practice was the sole criterion for testing truth. If a single crate of Source Crystals packed such devastating power, then had he foolishly charged into the Blood Nest with four crates and set them off together as originally planned, he was not sure whether he would have survived, but he almost certainly would not have outrun the blast radius. With that thought, Xu Yuan casually glanced toward the massive cavern hollowed out by the blast, intending to loot the corpse. The Barbarian King ought to have plenty of good things on him... Huh? Where was his corpse? A sudden chill shot straight from Xu Yuan's heels to the crown of his head. Sensing the spine-chilling aura of death, he instantly forced the Blood Yuan Heart Calamity Art into overdrive. The very next instant, a massive fist bristling with bone spikes, as wide as a washbasin, loomed directly in front of his face. It was brutally abrupt, so swift that its trajectory was an indistinct blur. Void-Stepping Slash. Boom! Fist met stone. The ground collapsed across a radius of over two hundred feet, the shattered rock bursting upward like curds of tofu under the colossal impact! Amidst the flying debris, Xu Yuan rematerialized, his back pressed against the tunnel ceiling. Looking down at the towering demon god radiating eerie blue light below, his heart plummeted straight to the abyss. He wasn't dead. How could he still not be dead? After having an arm severed by Li Qingyan and sustaining wound after wound across consecutive battles, how could Chi Feng take a direct hit from a whole crate of Source Crystal explosives and still survive?! Evidently, Barbarian King Chi Feng had no intention of explaining himself. While the shattered rock was still rolling through the air, Xu Yuan noticed an unsettling mutation in the black death creep he was absorbing. Not good! Crash! Stone fragments burst outward as a bone spike shot like lightning from the creep right behind him! Qingyu rang with a resonant hum as Xu Yuan spun around to sever it. Clang! The screech of clashing metal rang out. The edge of Xu Yuan's blade was halted by the pitch-black bone spike. The uncanny bone spike was absurdly durable; the ink-splash sword light of Blood-Ink Jade left nothing more than a faint nick on its surface. Seeing this, Xu Yuan immediately abandoned any thought of meeting it head-on. Void-Stepping Slash. With nothing left in its way, the black bone spike plunged from the ceiling straight into the ground, impaling the cavern from top to bottom! Given the durability of the Blood Jade Glazed Robe, it likely would have ended up strung on that spike like cloth on a skewer. Xu Yuan materialized dozens of paces away. Before he could even make sense of what that bone spike was, the Barbarian King's hulking silhouette was already upon him again. "Filthy winter fly!" Chi Feng stomped brutally, shattering the strata beneath him. His sinewy leg cut a faint blue arc through the air, whipping downward directly toward Xu Yuan's shoulder! Hum— With a sharp sword chime, Xu Yuan narrowed his eyes. The blade, gleaming with inky scarlet radiance, swept up to meet the incoming kick. Blood-Ink Jade: Heavenly Edge! Yet just as Xu Yuan prepared to unleash his full power and take the blow, an overwhelming premonition of death enveloped him. Without hesitation, he forcibly severed his flow of Source Qi. Void-Stepping Slash. The ground behind him shattered with a roar. Landing on his feet, Xu Yuan peered through the rising dust with pupils dyed pure, sclera-less crimson, taking in the scene within the haze. Chi Feng's attack had not been limited to that single sweeping kick. Innumerable pitch-black bone spikes had erupted from every corner of the passage, intersecting and grinding against one another with thunderous crashes. At the very center of that dense forest of bone spikes was precisely where Xu Yuan had been standing a moment before. Had he chosen to trade blows just now, he might indeed have wounded the Barbarian King or even sheared off one of his legs, but his own body would have been skewered through in an instant. Of course, in his current aberrant ghost state, he would not die from that. Which meant... Was this Barbarian King trying to take him alive with those bone spikes for interrogation? The moment the thought crossed his mind, Xu Yuan hesitated no longer. Boundless scarlet Source Qi erupted outward, and his blade rang with a crisp, clear chime. Void-Stepping Slash. Time to run! Though they had clashed for only an instant, Xu Yuan already understood that he was currently no match for Chi Feng with his barbarian runes unleashed. Without Luo Xiran's Inter-Abyss that resonated with aberrant ghosts, he could not manifest a Dao domain on his own. And without a Dao domain, setting aside those bizarre bone spikes, the Barbarian King's ghostly speed alone was so terrifying that Xu Yuan could barely react to it. Once again, Xu Yuan felt the gulf separating him from the world's absolute peak talents. If not for the Void-Stepping Slash that Qin Mo had invented, he would have died three times over by now. Had Xu Changge, that supreme show-off, been piloting his current aberrant ghost body, perhaps the one fleeing right now would have been Barbarian King Chi Feng. Amidst these racing thoughts, the two figures—one fleeing, one pursuing—had already covered thousands of paces. Debris flew and the underground palace groaned as massive swathes of the cavern began to collapse. He did not lead the Barbarian King toward Li Qingyan's group; the ant-nest-like tunnels of the Silent Crypt provided him with an intricate, labyrinthine escape route. In less than a quarter of an hour, Xu Yuan's body had accumulated more than a dozen wounds that refused to knit shut. Yet he kept running without ever looking back. With every step he took, the fungal carpet coating the corridor surface withered rapidly, all the vitality of the black death creep along the path being greedily sucked dry by the black death armor on his body. Through the creep clinging to the tunnel walls, Xu Yuan also pieced together what those bone spikes actually were. A Dao domain. Unlike any Dao domain Xu Yuan had seen before, Chi Feng's manifested without the slightest warning. It did not even release any perceptible fluctuations of Source Qi. Across a radius of several hundred yards centered on Chi Feng, every cavern passage within range was permeated by his domain, ready to thrust out those resilient, pitch-black bone spikes at any moment. Boom! Narrowly evading another devastating punch, Xu Yuan gritted his teeth and shot a sidelong glare at Chi Feng's stern, frigid face. The brute's speed remained swift as lightning, but with the stat buffs from his "epic-grade" black death armor, Xu Yuan could now barely track his movements. Feeling slightly reassured, Xu Yuan disregarded the strain on his meridians and unleashed Void-Stepping Slash once more to open the distance. Barbarian King, are you? Just you wait. If I can't beat you with raw talent, then I, Xu Changtian, will just cheat and crush you with better gear and stacked stats!